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The Herpetological Research Team at the USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center uses innovative tools to investigate the invasion and spread of American bullfrogs in Washington and Oregon and understand how bullfrogs are interacting with native amphibians.

Chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense) is one of the worst invasive plants in the South. It dominates the shrub layer and often becomes the only shrub underneath trees, especially in streamside areas. But insects and spiders living in fallen leaves and leaf litter were not affected by a privet invasion in Georgia, as a recent study shows.

Chinese tallow tree (Triadica sebifera) is a nonnative, invasive tree whose decaying leaf litter alters water quality and the microbial community in the wetland habitats. This negatively impacts the lifecycle of semi-aquatic species like frogs.

These data sheets are an adaptation of the IUCN supported Environmental Impacts Classification of Alien Taxa (EICAT) protocol for assessment of impacts of invasive species. A text version of the protocol is available in Hawkins et al. 2015 (see readme file). The data sheets provide a standard format for reporting and summarizing invasive species impacts.

Citation: Bradley, Bethany A. 2018. Data sheets for assessment of invasive species impacts. Data and Datasets. 58.

The invasive Asian jumping worm (Amynthas agrestis) has many common names: Alabama jumpers, Jersey wrigglers, wood eel, crazy worms, snake worms, and crazy snake worms. “Invasive Asian jumping worms got their name because of the way they thrash around,” said Mac Callaham, a Forest Service researcher who specializes in soils. “They can flip themselves a foot off the ground.”

Like other earthworms, Asian jumping worms eat tiny pieces of fallen leaves. But there’s a problem. Those fallen leaves make up the top layer of forest soil. The litter layer, as it’s called, is home to a vast number of tiny animals. Many plants can’t grow or spread without the layer of leaf litter. “Soil is the foundation of life – and Asian jumping worms change it,” says Callaham. “In fact, earthworms can have such huge impacts that they’re able to actually reengineer the ecosystems around them.”

New research by NOAA and partners finds that two species of invasive Asian carp -- the bighead carp and silver carp, collectively known as bigheaded carps -- could be capable of establishing populations in Saginaw Bay, Lake Huron and affecting the health of ecologically and economically important fish species such as yellow perch. The research, appearing online in the journal Biological Invasions, is based on a new model that simulates interactions between the bigheaded carps and a range of fish species, including walleye, yellow perch, and groups lower on the food web over a time period of 50 years. Over 180 non-indigenous aquatic species have already become established in the Great Lakes, with a handful of these producing substantial negative impacts. While bigheaded carps are established in watersheds near the Great Lakes, they have not yet become established in the Great Lakes.

Photosynthesis feeds trees and has a significant benefit for people, too, namely the removal of carbon from the atmosphere and into live tree biomass through a process called “sequestration.” But USDA Forest Service scientists and a colleague found that increased tree mortality from the impacts of nonnative insects and diseases results in the transfer of carbon stored in live trees into dead material, much of which will eventually return to the atmosphere by decomposition. This threatens the estimated 76 percent of carbon sequestration in North America that comes from forests.

The arid and semiarid Great Basin of the western United States comprises parts of California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Oregon and can variously be described by its hydrology, topography, or biology. Biologically, the area has been defined historically by the native sagebrush and shrubs that thrive in the dry valleys of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains. But, as a recent study undertaken by researchers at the University of Montana and the Department of Agriculture notes, these native plant communities are rapidly being colonized by nonnative annual grasses like cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), red brome (B. rubens), and medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae) to the detriment of wildlife and humans.